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By Bill Altreuter

Paul Ceglia, some guy from Wellsville (and trust me, nothing good has ever come out of Wellsville), says that Mark Zuckererg did some coding for him seven years ago, and along the way gave him a majority stake in "The Facebook". He brought an action in Allegheny County, which is in the exact middle of nowhere, and Facebook removed the action to federal court, on the grounds of diversity.  Ceglia's lawyer is one of the top guns around here, which makes the whole implausible thing even more peculiar-- Terry Connors is not the kind of guy I'd expect to take on a case that looks like a pure shakedown. Then again, I wouldn't expect Terry Connors to argue that a donation to the Newark New Jersey school system establishes a jurisdictional connection to New York for diversity purposes.  I'd kind of expect Terry Connors to be cool with being in the Western District of New York. I think I'd like to know more about what's going on here.

I liked The Social Network-- it's stayed with me, and I'm a little surprised by that. I did a quick LEXIS check on Paul Ceglia v Zuckerberg & Facebook, U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, No. 10-00569 to see if I could find the removal filing, but I didn't see it.  What I did see was a whole raft of litigation in which Facebook and Zuckerberg are defendants, and now I'm thinking that this is one of those situations where a there's a big target and a lot of people taking shots at it. Suddenly I'm a lot more sympathetic to the site that I've always been a little suspicious about.

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on October 15, 2010 (boomark / email).